‘My life has been destroyed’ - Brighouse businessman the victim of £140,000 jewellery theft

Published:08:13Updated:08:32Wednesday 10 May 2017

A Brighouse businessman says his life has been “destroyed” after two of his own employees stole a valuable collection of jewellery from a workplace safe.

Mike Noble, managing director of RA Technology Limited, had used the safe at the company’s Brighouse headquarters to store a collection amassed over the last 36 years.

And it was this safe which workers Connor McCaffrey and Jordan Nettleship broke into on a number of occasions last August.

While many items had been bought as investments towards Mr Noble’s pension pot, the collection also included treasured family heirlooms of great sentimental value.

Among those items were his wife’s engagement ring and wedding ring, the latter of which had belonged to Mr Noble’s grandmother originally.

“It was an historic, family heirloom that was going to be handed onto my children one day and that’s gone,” Mr Noble said.

“There are things that are gone that can’t be replaced. Things that my wife held very dearly.”

Bradford Crown Court heard on Monday how McCaffrey and Nettleship covered CCTV cameras in a bid to cover their tracks, but conversation in which they planned the robbery had been recorded on security equipment elsewhere on the site.

Mr Noble said: “We could hear them discussing what they were taking, how much they could get for them. They talked about putting the empty ring boxes back so I wouldn’t expect a theft had occurred. It was unbelievable - the betrayal of trust.

“All my working life I’ve treated employees as best as I can, as family. We buy them Christmas presents, we make a fuss of their birthdays.

“For them to do that to use was unbelievable. They knew my wife was not well. Her father was dying of dementia. They knew we were under the cosh.”